Chris Elsberry: 'Moment' of victory elusive to UB

Published 1:00 am, Sunday, March 24, 2013

MANCHESTER, N.H. -- Darian David plopped himself down into a chair in the postgame interview room, draped the white towel he'd been carrying over his head like he was the emperor from Star Wars, and hoped that no one would ask him any questions.

This one had slipped away. Rather, the University of Bridgeport had given it away. Down in the gym, Franklin Pierce was cutting down the nets from a 57-52 victory over the Purple Knights, which gave the Ravens the NCAA Division II East Region championship and a berth in the Elite Eight in Louisville. And upstairs, in the interview room, David, fellow senior Dion Waiters and head coach Mike Ruane tried to put into perspective how this one had slipped away.

"Maybe we weren't used to the moment," Ruane said.

The "moment" was playing in the Sweet 16. This was the seventh time under Ruane that the Purple Knights had earned an NCAA berth, but this was the first time Ruane and UB had won two games in the East Region to play for the championship. They were 40 minutes away from creating a new chapter in UB basketball history, a chapter that didn't include the names Bruce Webster or Carlton Hurdle or Lambert Shell or Stevie Ray.

This was UB's 19th NCAA appearance but only the fourth time that Bridgeport was playing for a shot at the Elite Eight. In 1979, Webster's Purple Knights, led by Hurdle, reached the Final Four, falling to North Alabama and then losing to Cheyney in the third-place game. In 1991 and '92, led by Shell and Ray, UB made it all the way to the championship game. Both times, however, they lost, to North Alabama and then to Virginia Union.

They hadn't been this far in the tournament since.

Even Manute Bol never got this far, losing in the regional semifinal to Sacred Heart in 1985.

"This group was not used to being together for this championship moment. We did it in the conference playoff but that was at home, not in this atmosphere," Ruane said. "We weren't ready for the moment to pull through. And me ... maybe our staff wasn't ready for the moment.

"You can always second-guess yourself. But I think that the experience was good, especially for the seniors and for the young kids, it'll prepare us for the future."

At one point, David said that the players might have been thinking about playing in the Elite Eight even before they tipped off against Franklin Pierce in the Sweet 16 game, and that they "got overanxious" trying to make home run plays and blow the Ravens out of the gym "instead of doing what we normally do."

What UB normally does is beat you with defense. Over the course of the season, they held opponents to barely 40 percent shooting from the field, 30 percent from behind the 3-point line and forced 10.2 steals a game, led by Waiters, who led all of Division II with 4.44 a game.

"Maybe it was too much," Ruane said. "Maybe it was too much thinking `national championship.' Too much thinking `regional title' instead of making the play and focusing on the next step, which is the play. And playing together. I don't think we really played as together as we could have.

"I thought the effort was there and ... hats off to Franklin Pierce, they kept their composure in the second half. They didn't make the big turnovers or commit the bad fouls."

Over the next couple of weeks, Ruane will likely watch film of this game a couple of dozen times. He'll note the good plays -- and all the bad -- and think about the things that he could have done to change the outcome. He will write it down, file it away and hope that there will come another time when he can use that information to get UB to the Eilte Eight or, better yet, to the Final Four.

"We've been here but you never know if you'll get back," he said. "I look at a guy like Manute Bol ... he didn't win the regional either. There's been many (UB) teams that had great players that weren't able to win a regional. We're happy that we got this far, but this isn't good enough. This isn't good enough for our program, for what we invested in, for what we're trying to accomplish.